


Trouble with Tribbles

by specialrhino



Category: Other Space (TV)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/specialrhino/pseuds/specialrhino





	Trouble with Tribbles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neutrophilic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neutrophilic/gifts).



Karen dreamed she was sunbathing in the bay at Monterey. It was freezing. Her body was tense with the cold. Chad was petting a seal that barked its approval.

She looked up at the sky. The sun was her warp mechanics TA who had never liked Karen very much, and was creeping forward with Karen's last quiz in her hand. She was coming closer and closer, and it was getting hotter and hotter all around her, so hot she was burning up-- Karen woke up in a sweaty tangle of sheets. Her hair was even frizzier than usual. "NATASHA!"

"Yes, Karen?" Natasha said it very pleasantly for someone who was probably playing a prank on her.

"Why is it so hot in here? Turn down the temperature!"

"Is it really?" said Natasha. "The sensors should have warned me if it was reaching intemperate - oh. Oh, dear." That didn't sound good.

"What?" growled Karen. She hated the heat. There was a reason she had wanted to go out into cold, dead space, after all.

"It seems I can't... see... temperature at the moment."

Karen rubbed her eyes. With any luck, she had misheard or was still dreaming. "What?"

Natasha gave a little laugh. "This is funny, I've never heard of this happening before! No temperature readings at all! Does it really matter, though? What an abstract thing, temperature."

Karen never had been very lucky. "It really isn't," she said, "when you have an actual body."

Natasha muttered, "Well, it's certainly nothing I did to myself..." to herself, moving her hands around in the 'air' in front of her.

"Can you fix it?"

"At the moment... no." Natasha smiled apologetically. "Not until I can figure out why this happened."

"Wake everyone up. It's time for a crew meeting."

Karen felt much better once she'd changed out of her UMP regulated onesie and into her uniform. She was in charge; she would handle this. Well, she was second in command, but she would make sure Stewart handled this.

Or else.

Unsurprisingly, the problem turned out to be due to the incompetence of someone in the crew. The ship's engineer, no less. It was deeply ironic that all of the technical problems seemed to come from the person who was in charge of handling them.

When Karen got Stewart to confront him, Zalian squinted at the ceiling askance. "Did I do anything differently yesterday?" he wondered, tapping his lips with his index finger. "Anything to do with the temperature..." He trailed off, and his staring evolved into spacing out. Stewart didn't seem to notice.

"Zalian!" Karen prompted, perhaps a little aggressively. She needed her nine hours of sleep a night, okay?

"We were playing that golfing game," said Art.

"Oh yeah." Zalian snapped his fingers. "We found a game on the server."

"It was pretty jerky and froze up at moments, so we decided to delete some stuff to make the computer go faster."

"Yeah," Zalian was nodding along.

"That game came with the model of the computer," Natasha said. "It's 75 years old and was designed during the resurgence of retro 2D gaming. It was probably supposed to be low quality."

Karen did not care. "Delete what _kind_ of stuff?"

"Just, you know, stuff." Zalian said. "Bonjour, the MTV disco lights function-"

"But I love that function..." Tina whimpered.

"- and the thermometer. We figured, on a ship that's climate controlled, why would you actually need a thermometer?" Zalian laughed a little. "It's funny that turned out to be important."

"If I may, Captain," Kent said, leaning forward. "Might I propose a method of amelioration? What if we grafted the coffee bot's temperature sensor into Natasha's hardware?"

Natasha blushed. "I don't think I'm ready to know the coffeemaker that well. I'm not _that_ kind of computer."

Stewart cleared his throat. "Raise your hand if you want to deal with my sister when she's uncaffeinated."

No one raised their hand.

Karen felt her eyebrow twitching. Tina pushed her cup of coffee across the table to her. Karen didn't need it and wasn't at all grateful. She took a sip. "Does anyone else have any bright ideas? We shouldn't leave here until we come up with a solution."

Silence descended. Seriously, did Karen have to do all of the work around here? She wiped her hand across her sweaty forehead. A nice steam, she promised herself. Once they dealt with this, it was straight into the steam closet.

Stewart made an "Aha!" sound and actually raised his finger in the air. "Natasha, can you use visual cues from us, like sweat and skin tone, to determine whether the room is the right temperature?" he said in one of his rare displays of common sense.

"I should be able to, Captain."

Stewart did a little victory dance. "Problem solved!"

Karen rolled her eyes. "That's a stopgap, not a solution, Stewart. In the meantime, we need to check everything in the ship to make sure nothing was adversely affected by the temperature fluctuations."

The crew groaned in unison. Tina put her head on the table. Her hair was less than perfect, her pigtails obviously hastily constructed. It was kind of cute.

"Check and triple check," Karen repeated with the grim purpose that had failed her many leadership tests.

 

The ship was fine, for the most part. One of the fudge containers was leaking a small stream of chocolate, but that was in Zalian's domain, so there was no need to clean it up. He'd probably be upset at losing the chance to lick it clean.

There was also a fungus growing in the airlock. It was hairy.

Michael eyed it from his place beside Stewart. "Is that a fungus? That's just a fungus, right?"

"It is uncommonly hirsute for a member of the eukaryote domain."

"Natasha?" asked Stewart.

Natasha leaned down to look at it, even though it probably made no difference in her visual input. "Initial scans indicate that this biological material is unlike anything from our galaxy. It could be similar to something from our universe, but as UMP has only explored a small part of it so far, it's impossible to say."

"So how did it get in, then?" Karen asked, crossing her arms. "It couldn't have come from the vacuum of space."

"But space is _colored_ here, Karen!" Stewart whinexlaimed. "Anything could be possible!"

"Panspermia," Kent breathed in reverent tones. "Happening right before our eyes."

Tina grimaced. "Ew."

"Haha," said Art. "He said sperm."

Kent looked up from where he was leaning into (and fogging up) the glass of the airlock door. "Not sperm, _panspermia_.Theoretically, some things can survive in the vacuum of space; panspermia is the idea that such bacteria can spread across the universe and seed other planets with organic life. And now it's happening, right here, on our ship."

"So we're being colonized?" Michael sounded panicky.

Not this again. If Michael fainted, it was not going to be Karen who dragged his body out of the corridor. "Let's just keep the airlocks closed for now until we can figure out how bad it is," she said. Michael looked a little calmer at her tone. She mentally high-fived herself. Who's the best at shutting Michael down? Karen is, Karen is!

Zalien raised his hand. "Why don't we just irradiate it? I can bring some stuff from the engine room out here, that should kill it eventually."

"Or mutate it into who knows what," said Karen. Zalien missed this obvious slight.

"Cool! I've always wanted to be friends with a mutant." He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his jumpsuit pocket. It was covered in his messy scrawl and a few mysterious stains. "It's on my bucket list, see?" He handed it to Stewart, who was standing next to him.

" _Live in a bouncy castle, snort cocaine with a clown_ \-- how did you scuba dive naked? Is that even possible?" Stewart asked. "Wait, no, don't answer that."

"Well," said Zalien, restoring the bucket list to his pocket and obediently not answering that. "I've got to go clean up that fudge."

 

Everything seemed like it was fine until the next day, when Karen almost tripped over Michael where he was crouched down in the corridor.

"Jeez, Michael, don't stand in people's way! They never see you there!"

Michael didn't answer, too busy cooing at and petting something.

It looked like a giant hairball. Karen bent down to look at it closer. It slowly rolled toward her, like a morbidly obese hedgehog playing tumbleweed. Except instead of stark loneliness and solidarity, this invoked a deep feeling of peace and... dopamine. Each quarter of lumpy revolution it rolled into her sight felt like a hot, steaming rolling pin, ironing out the anxiety and unhappiness from her mind. She just... wanted... to touch it....

She sneezed, and then blinked rapidly for a moment.

What had she just been doing? She stood up and resumed glaring at Michael. "Keep that thing away from me Michael, you know I have allergies."

She saw it again at lunch, perched on Michael's shoulder, out of range of her sinuses. It was one of the most happy, peaceful meals she'd ever had. She loved everyone, she realized. Everyone was so nice. They all hummed contentment at one another. A pizza party for dinner was decided upon by unanimous show of hands. A girl's night was planned and negotiated for afterwards, which Natasha consented to, baffled.

"Is everyone alright?" she asked. "Sensors indicate you're all doing abnormally well."

Kent looked up from where he was petting the hairy creature perched on Michael's shoulder (and Michael's bicep below it). "We feel perfectly fine, Natasha, thank you for asking."

"You're the most considerate computer I've ever met," sighed Tina. "And I love your dress."

Karen agreed on both counts. Natasha was just so great. Karen wanted to cuddle her, along with everyone else.

"I just don't get the appeal of mammals," Natasha said, watching them.

The ship's work stopped for no cuddle session, however, so Karen ordered everyone back to work at 1300 hours. She saw Michael feeding the thing a lukewarm turkey sandwich pellet as she left.

The feeling of contentment lasted through her system diagnostic and a check on the mystery fungus (still hairy, not much grown) and gradually faded as she walked to her quarters for a break. She had hazy, confusing memories of planning a pizza party...?

She almost ran into Michael in the corridor for the second time that day. "Michael, watch where you're going."

She looked up and stopped at what she saw. The fluffy thing was still on Michael's shoulder, but it was an angry red jello color, and Michael's eyes matched. The thing quivered.

"Why'd you have to run into me, Karen? Can't you people respect my space?!" Michael flailed his arms around wildly. It should have looked ridiculous, especially coming from someone as bland as Michael, but it felt menacing instead. It was the red eyes.

"Oh my god, Michael, I don't think you're alright." Karen reached out her hand to put it on his shoulder. He jerked away from her.

"Don't tell me what I'm feeling!"

She took a step back and eyed the quivering, fluffy thing. She scanned the walls around her, looking for a plan. Anything, anything, anything-- perfect.

She looked past Michael and pointed theatrically. "Look!" Her plan was foolproof: Michael always fell for that one.

He looked over his left shoulder while Karen grabbed the fluffy thing from his right and shoved it down the trash chute in the wall.

Her palms stung a little, but the feeling faded as she brushed them off on her uniform jacket. The air felt a little less charged. Everything was going to be okay.

"Michael, are you feeling better? I don't think that thing--"

Michael let out a roar of rage and ran down the hall in the other direction.

"What. The. F***." Karen needed to find some sedatives, stat. But they kept the first aid kit on the main bridge, which was in the direction Michael had gone.

She heard the sound of breaking glass down the hall. She didn't have to wonder for long what it was, because moments later Michael came walking toward her, holding an antique fire axe. If they ever got back to their universe, someone was going to be really angry he'd broken the display case it was kept in.

She didn't have time to worry about that, though. Karen had passed all of her tests at the Academy with flying colors, but that was because she was good at strategy and ruthless enough to amputate someone's arm in an emergency. Hand-to-hand combat (with someone other than her little brother) was not her area. She was not prepared for this shit. She backed away slowly, hands up in what she had read was a placating gesture.

"It's okay Michael, we're going to get you help."

She opened the door next to her, hopefully an escape. Art was on the other side.

"Art! Let me in!" Karen hissed.

"Hey guys, what's up?" he said loudly. She suspected he kept his auditory units on low so he didn't have to listen to half the things they said. Karen jerked her head meaningfully towards rage zombie Michael. Art raised an arm. "Oh! Michael, with an axe? A lover's tiff, I see."

"Art! Help me or I will kill you again, I swear."

"I think I'll leave you to your privacy. It would be unfair to choose a side, after all," he said, and shut the door. Karen heard the click of a lock being engaged. She would throw that body in the furnace, she decided, and take the next one apart, circuit by circuit.

Michael lunged forward and she decided, fuck it, run. Maybe she'd come across a place to trap him along the way. Or maybe one of the other crew members would be there and Michael would attack them instead, giving Karen time to escape. They would probably only get a little mauled. Who knows whether Michael would be violent towards them as well, anyways?

They turned a corner and the corridor came to a T in front of her with a green door at the junction. The billiards room! She ran for the door, opened it, and jumped sideways as Michael leaped through the doorway she'd just vacated, axe held aloft. She closed the door behind him.

"Computer, lock door," she said with no small relief. Her hands were shaking as she smoothed down the pristine front of her uniform pants. At least that was over.

But it wasn't. She heard a scream from behind the door. Oh, no, Tina!

"Computer, override door lock!" she yelled and ran inside.

Michael had had an equally violent reaction to Tina, even though she wasn't the one who had taken his furry... thing. He had backed her into a corner where she stood, panicked and shakily holding up a hairbrush as a weapon.

Karen grabbed a chair and threw it at Michael, who stumbled. Tina was frozen in shock and didn't move, so Karen darted forward and shielded Tina with her body. It wasn't like she liked her or anything, but now that it came down to it, she couldn't stomach anyone getting hurt on her watch. That's what good crew members did: they protected their team.

The seconds stretched out improbably long, her experience of time slowed by adrenaline. The scene resolved itself in Karen's brain as discrete sensory perceptions: she watched with horror as Michael righted himself, she felt Tina's pressed against her back, soft and warm. She smelled the crisp, odourless tang of the ship's filtered air (with the hint of fudge Zalian probably hadn't cleaned properly) mixing with the scent of Tina's perfume. She'd used it once before, the morning after-- well. She'd accidentally forgotten her second favorite bra at Tina's place. It had been terrible.

Her bra. Her handy amputating laser scalpel was in her bra, she suddenly remembered. Always be prepared!

Michael took a step forward. She probably wouldn't have time to reach it--

Stewart stumbled in the open door, out of breath. "Hey guys, what's wrong? I heard a scream."

Michael turned on him. Karen whirled around and grabbed Tina's shoulders, hoping to haul her out of harm's way, under a table, out of Michael's sight, anywhere but there in the open.

Her idiot brother probably didn't have enough common sense to run, but instead of the sound of his girlish scream or the sound of him trying to reason with a red-eyed, crazed Michael, there was the sound of-- was that--

She turned around, and Michael had pushed Stewart against a wall and was-- attacking him with his mouth? No, she realized, Michael was making out with him enthusiastically. Making out with Stewart. Enthusiastically.

She stood there with her mouth open. She really had not seen this coming.

Tina picked up the axe and belatedly hit Michael over the head with the flat side of it, like it was a shovel.

"Guys," said Stewart, looking mightily ruffled, Michael now slumped at his feet. "What just happened?"

 

They held council in fierce whispers in the doorway, an unconscious Michael still in a heap inside. Natasha had fetched the rest of the crew to them.

"So why aren't we having this conversation in the medbay?" asked Stewart.

"Because we don't have a medbay, Stewart." Her eyebrow was doing that twitchy thing again, she could feel it.

"Oh yeah," he said.

"Um," said Tina, raising her hand. "Why don't we have a medbay? Isn't that kind of unsafe?"

"This was refitted as a reality TV ship, remember? If someone got injured, they'd just take them off the ship."

"We do have a cryogenic chamber," said Natasha. "I'm sure a few weeks in deep freeze is just what he needs."

Karen rubbed her forehead in frustration. She could feel a headache coming on. "He won't actually get better if we do that, Natasha."

"I'm certified in first aid, guys," Zalien said. "The first step is for everyone to just calm down." He held his hands out in a soothing, simmer down motion.

Tina glared at him and said in a high voice, "The last time I was calming down, Michael barged in. With crazy zombie eyes. And an axe."

"Why were you in the billiards room, anyways?" asked Karen, crossing her arms. "I've never seen you play."

Tina gave her a weird look. "All of the other rooms were too hot or cold."

Stewart frowned. "I thought I-- we-- fixed that problem."

"Natasha?" Karen growled. Yep, there was that tension headache.

"Apologies, First Officer. Tina wears so much makeup that I cannot detect sweat or variance in skin tone."

"Oh really?" Stewart said, trying for nonchalance. "It looks like Tina will have to stay with one of us at all times. I volunt--"

"I call Karen!" Tina stepped toward her. Karen shifted back half a step. Tina pouted.

"Fine, but no need to be in my personal bubble."

Michael groaned and everyone jumped and looked into the room nervously, remembering why they were there. Well, everyone except for Zalien, who was whittling a piece of wood, for some reason. Karen didn't know where he could've gotten it-- humanity had stopped using wood for anything 50 years ago.

"Captain." Kent inclined his head deferentially. "We should contain him somewhere and see whether his highly erratic behavior subsides.

Surprisingly, Stewart objected to this. "Who knows how long that could take! We can't just lock him in somewhere to die! He'll need food, water, companionship. Don't you guys care about that?"

"Spoken like someone he wasn't trying to kill," said Karen.

"Well," said Natasha. "I can notify a member of the crew whenever Michael is asleep and someone can bring him food. Assuming his condition isn't contagious, of course." She gave one of her rich laughs.

Everyone froze.

Kent was the first to move. "Natasha has a point. I believe this is a quarantine situation. I'm going to go store my body in my hormone bath."

"Ew. We did not need to know that." Tina wrinkled her nose.

"TMI, buddy," Art said simultaneously. Then he paused, and continued in what he clearly thought was a subtle tone of voice. "Hey, if all of you humans get infected and kill each other off, that means I'm in charge of the ship, right?"

"No, not really," said Stewart.

Just in case he got any ideas, Karen stamped down his dream a little more thoroughly. "You're not one of the crew, so no. Natasha would be."

"Is she really crew though? I mean, technically--"

Karen grit her teeth, and glared at him. "I will give her free will. With my dying breath."

Natasha perked up at that. "You would? Really?"

At least someone was enjoying the situation.

 

"Why do I have to be in here, too?" Stewart whined loud enough for Karen to hear him through the glass window. He was sitting in the escape pod, Michael's unconscious form sprawled next to him on the floor. Natasha and Kent were displayed on one of the computer screens. The entire interior was metallic discomfort, and not even the sherbert swirl of space through the window was enough to make it look cheery.

"You expressed concern for his physical well being," Natasha said. "And, more importantly, you are the one that's had the closest contact with him. If this is communicable, you're the one it would manifest in first."

"It has been a great honor knowing you," Kent said solemnly. "When he awakens, I suggest you bare your neck and submit to anything he wants to do to you."

Stewart really did inspire the greatest loyalty and respect in his crew members. "Don't worry," continued Kent. "Whatever he does, Natasha and I will be here the whole time, watching. No matter how humiliating his ministrations, you will not be alone."

"Can you not?"

Karen put her hand against the glass. "Hang in there Stewart, I'm going to figure this out."

He gave her an 'aw, shucks,' smile and got up to put his hand up against hers. "Thanks, Karen, that means a lot to me."

"I know for a fact that you haven't written a will yet, and I want all of your vintage CDs to go to me."

 

On the other side of the ship, Karen assembled the remaining crew members for a tense meeting.

"We have to figure out what to do," said Karen, leaning forward over the table.

Tina's feet were up on a chair, and she was painting her nails a shade of purple that was against UMP regulations. Karen flashed back on how scared she'd looked earlier in the corner, unarmed, and decided not to reprimand her. Tina went around doing stuff like eating people's legs, so Karen forgot that she was vulnerable, too. Tina had never been very good at hand-to-hand, after all-- she'd never put up much of a fight in Judo class when Karen had her pinned to the mat.

Natasha and Kent were holding a whispered conversation.

Zalien was staring at the ground.

Art was the one that responded. "They're locked up, who cares!"

"Michael wasn't the only part of the problem, Art. It was that fuzzy alien thing. What if there was more than one of them?"

"We're good," said Tina, painting the nail of her ring finger. "While you guys were dragging Michael to the escape pod, I blowtorched the inside of the airlock. Whatever that thing was, it isn't coming back."

An image popped into Karen's head of Tina, pigtails galore, burning everything with a manic gleam in her eye. She couldn't decide whether it was adorable, childish, or terrifying. What was her brother thinking? He could never manage to keep up with that.

"That was surprisingly efficient, Tina," Karen said. It was also wildly irresponsible, but they really couldn't afford to be hesitant when it came to intruders on the ship. Although she would have died happily believing she was an Admiral.

Tina smiled and straightened up a bit.

Natasha cleared her throat. "The contaminant seemed to lower inhibitions and cause the sufferer to react to situations with their initial impulses."

"Like roofies!" Art said with alacrity.

"Not like 20th century rohypnol," Kent said, looking off into whatever space he got his facts from. "More like a tribble, at first, and then like blood fever." He frowned. "Or perhaps the unnamed contaminant in the episode 'The Naked Time' provides a better analogy." That space was classic television, apparently.

"Bwuh?" said Tina.

"Something that enhances subconscious impulses into violent reactions. Apparently he still harbors ill will against you for eating his leg, Tina. And against you, Karen, for constantly emasculating him."

"And his superficial feeling for Stewart is... attraction?" asked Karen.

"You said it, not me," said Art.

They heard a loud thumping noise from beneath them.

"Natasha!" Karen called.

 

"Michael has woken up," Natasha said. "His behavior from before is unchanged."

"No, Natasha. The noise. What's that noise?"

"That's not Michael?" asked Zalien.

"No, you idiot, the escape pod is on the other side of the ship. This is coming from below decks. As the engineer, shouldn't you know the layout of your own ship?"

"Life is a labyrinth," said Zalien peacably, "that moves around you as you breathe in the universe."

"Whatever."

Tina cocked her head. "Isn't the trash chute beneath us?"

"Oh god," said Karen. "Is that thing still alive?"

"What thing?" asked Art.

"The fungus. The fungus tribble!"

"Computer, turn on the furnace!" said Tina.

"Initiating trash incineration protocol," said Natasha.

"Override!" said Karen. "Don't tell a computer that has no concept of temperature to burn something! She could do real damage! Empty the trash chute into space, Natasha."

Tina pouted.

There was a whooshing sound, then the thumping was gone.

"Natasha, how's Michael?"

"He is well," said Natasha. "His eyes have returned to their normal color. He hasn't quite... stopped, though. Your brother is acting like he has been infected as well, although given his eye color and Michael's return to normal helath, I don't think that is a possibility."

Art wolf whistled. "The fated romance between a captain and his third-in-command."

"Eurgh," said Tina. "I'm one degree away from having made out with Stewart."

"Oh god," said Karen. "So am I." She collapsed into the nearest chair. That didn't seem like enough, so she also put her head on the table.

She waved her hand at the crew. "Dismissed. Go eat dinner or something," she mumbled into her arms. She wished the day had a repeat button.

 

Karen woke up in the middle of the night to a knock on her door.

"Natasha?" she whispered.

"Good evening, Karen," Natasha said, all too pleasantly for the hour. "Stewart is petting Michael's hair and they are talking about Spiderman."

"No, that's not what I-- ugh! Lights at 20%!" Karen fell out of bed and got up to open the door, blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

Tina was standing on the other side, rubbing her arms and shivering.

"What are you doing here?" asked Karen. Tina pushed her aside, stepped into the room and sat down on her bed.

"The temperature in my room was being weird and I kept waking up." She did look pretty exhausted.

"But you took off your makeup to go to sleep. And you're wearing short sleeves."

"I didn't detect any temperature variation in her quarters," Natasha said.

"I grew up in Uzbekistan," Tina sniffed. "I don't actually get goosebumps unless it's below freezing."

"So what do you want me to do about it?"

"I need to sleep in here," said Tina.

"You know they give captains and first officers single beds so they won't get distracted by dalliances," Karen said slowly.

"Then come sleep in my room!" said Tina. "Pleeeease. I need my beauty rest."

Her hair was down over her shoulders and endearingly tangled.

Karen felt her face heating up. Apparently Natasha saw it as well, because a few moments later the room temperature lowered slightly. They really needed to get the thermometer thing fixed already.

"No way," she huffed, walking over to her bedside dresser and opening a drawer. "You kick."

Tina looked hurt out of the corner of Karen's eye. "Yeah, well, you talk in your sleep. Not everyone is perfect, you know."

"Aha!" Karen said, pulling out a bracelet from underneath her eReader. "Here," she said, holding it out to Tina. "You can wear this. It'll help you sleep, and you won't need to follow anyone around during the day."

Tina gasped. "Is that a _mood changing bracelet_?" She made no move to take it, so Karen grabbed her wrist and started fiddling with the clasp.

"Calm down, it isn't an heirloom. It's a fake, actually, but it does the job just as well." Tina's skin was just as soft as she remembered it.

Natasha appeared on the screen in the corner. "I'm detecting a raise in Tina's pulse. Lowering the temperature and initiating a soothing forest soundtrack protocol."

Tina took her wrist back. "I’m not warm, Natasha. I'm just worried I'm going to have an allergic reaction to the metal. I have very sensitive skin." Despite her words, Tina was stroking the smooth surface of the bracelet. "This is more expensive than anything Ted gave me," she mumbled to herself.

"Yeah, well, whatever, I'm not taking it back," snapped Karen. "Good night." She pushed Tina out the door and lay down to go to sleep to the soothing tones of wind in trees and the cooing of nightingales.

 

The entire crew was at breakfast the next morning, including the previously indisposed: Kent was back in his body, the worry of contagion having passed; Michael was squinting down at a stack of pancakes and bacon, looking hungover; and Stewart was his chipper self.

Karen was relieved to see Stewart intact. Michael's... intentions toward him seemed harmless enough, but she still secretly worried about the wellbeing of her baby brother, idiot that he was. That was part of why it was so annoying to be posted with him on the same assignment: she had known they were both heading off into the dangers of unknown space, but she'd hoped she wouldn't have to be around to see Stewart throw himself at danger in person.

Her spark of relief and good will ended when he opened his mouth. "Karen, is Tina wearing the mood changing bracelet you won at the international water skiing final?"

"So what if it is?"

"You never give up your trophies!"

Tina sat up, looking interested. "Really?"

"It's for the safety of the crew, Stewart. We can't just let Tina get frozen alive or something."

Kent looked up. "I do not possess sweat glands. Is there a matching accessory for me to use?"

Stewart looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. "I think there was a necklace that went along with it."

"Get your own damn jewelry," Karen snapped. "Or cryogenically freeze your body until this is over."

"Will it ever be over?" asked Zalien. "The universe never ends, it just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and--"

"Are you sure you can't fix it?" Stewart asked. "You were the one that broke it in the first place."

Zalien shook his head sadly. "I'm more of a hardware guy than a software one," he said.

"And I refuse to code without thumbs," Art chimed in.

"No one was talking to you," Karen said.

"You couldn't even remember to empty the trash when throwing out dangerous alien life," Art retorted. "It's not like you're going to be the one that fixes this."

"That's it!" Tina exclaimed. "Natasha, have you emptied the computer's recycle bin recently?"

"No," Natasha answered. "Thank you for reminding me. Initiating deletion sequence in three, two-- "

"Wait! No, I mean, is the thermometer function still in the recycle bin?"

"Huh," said Natasha. "Let me check."

There was no way it could be that simple. Karen was on a ship full of idiots, if it were. She would have lost her prized bracelet to-- well, to a fairly good cause. Vintage wasn't her style, anyway.

Suddenly the room went from uninvitingly chilly to pleasant room temperature. "Yep," said Natasha, "I was able to restore the thermometer function."

"Great," said Stewart, looking pleased even though he hadn't done anything. Karen hoped it was because of his natural sunny disposition and not because he'd gotten laid last night.

"Tina--" Karen started to say.

"This bracelet is mine, no take backs!" Tina said, cradling her wrist to her body protectively.

"I was actually going to say, good job."

"Oh," said Tina, smiling. "Really?"

"Ugh get a room, you two!" Art interrupted. Stewart choked on his hot chocolate.

Zalien stood up. "I'm going to finish this sandwich somewhere else." He walked into Michael's chair and seemed surprised he was still there.

Kent was dabbing at his gills with a wet paper towel and ignoring all of them.

Ugh, this crew was impossible.

This wasn't at all how she'd imagined space exploration would be.

Only Stewart could have cobbled together such a ridiculous, incompetent crew. But, she mused as she chewed on Stewart's last piece of bacon and stared out the bay window into the rainbow space, maybe the team she would have chosen would have been a lot less entertaining.


End file.
